| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: you, and so also your reason and virtue.
The hour when ye say: "What good is my happiness! It is poverty and
pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify
existence itself!"
The hour when ye say: "What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge
as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-
complacency!"
The hour when ye say: "What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me
passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and
pollution and wretched self-complacency!"
The hour when ye say: "What good is my justice! I do not see that I am
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: ten thousand miles from where you are. Why, when you come to think
of it, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give
the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre
of those others. And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed
up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah
of outlanders gone rotten. Give me the home product every time.
Very well. I saw at a glance that the Florentine paper would
suit me: five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local;
they were adventures of one's very neighbors, one might almost say
one's friends. In the matter of world news there was not too much,
but just about enough. I subscribed. I have had no occasion
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